U.S. Pat. No. 7,243,074 describes a method for determining capacity utilization and predicting the future capacity utilization of a goods delivery system from a supplier to a buyer utilizing a system having at least one delivery agent, at least one store, at least one manufacturer, and a plurality of buyers, wherein the at least one delivery agent, at least one store, and the at least one manufacturer are coupled to a communications network. The method comprises the steps of searching for the available capacity in each one of a plurality of markets wherein each market has at least one delivery zone, calculating the capacity utilization by day for each zone, setting a flag which is indicative of over capacity or under capacity, determining the probability that the next day will be over capacity based on historical data, and determining the trend-line of capacity utilization based on historical data.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20040107110 describes optimizing a total cost associated with transporting products on a set of vehicles. Orders representing products are assigned to one or more vehicles in the set. The assignment defines a sequence of pickup and delivery activities for the vehicles. One or more orders are deleted from one or more vehicles; at least one order from the deleted orders is inserted into a vehicle; the assignment is changed for at least one vehicle; and a cost is determined for the transportation of the products on the set of vehicles. The steps of deleting one or more orders, inserting at least one order, changing the assignment, and determining a cost are repeated until an optimal cost has been determined.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20040225507 describes a method of managing the delivery of an order from at least one supplier to a respective delivery agent, and from the delivery agent to a respective buyer, given a requested order date and the respective buyers address, consisting of the steps including: determining a first potential arrival date of the order at a respective delivery agent's location based on the order request date and the buyer's address; calculating the capacity of the delivery agent to ship the order based the first potential arrive date request; and finally, determining when there is sufficient capacity to ship the order to the buyer's address.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,975,997 describes a system for sharing a fleet of vehicles among a plurality of users where, in preferred embodiments, the shared vehicles are electrically powered, the system comprising a system control computer that assigns vehicles in response to requests by users and monitors system performance, a computer subsystem through which users request vehicles for trips, and a vehicle subsystem within each vehicle that is in communication with the system control computer, allowing the system control computer to monitor the location and status of each vehicle in the vehicle sharing fleet.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,197,376 describes a mail processing system that delivers articles to delivery locations wherein a first transport vehicle at a first loading point is loaded with a first article and guided along a first delivery path to a first delivery location. A second transport vehicle at a second loading point is loaded with a second article and guided along a second delivery path to a second delivery location. Depending on a determination of whether the first and second transport vehicles deliver the first and second articles to the respective first and second delivery locations, the method returns an empty transport vehicle to the nearest one of the loading points and bypasses one of the first and second loading points for a still loaded transport vehicle. This allows minimization of the number of transport vehicles within the system.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,197,376 describes a method of scheduling a vehicle in real-time to transport freight and passengers. A host receives transportation requests (e.g., to deliver freight, transport passengers, reschedule, cancel, etc.) over a network from a freight terminal and/or a passenger terminal. A route is created at the host with destinations based on the received transportation requests. The host predicts an arrival time and a departure time for each destination along the route and generates a route schedule. As the vehicle travels to each destination, the host receives actual arrival and departure times and uses these actual times to update the route schedule. The route schedule is also updated when new destinations are added or a scheduled destination is cancelled. In another embodiment, the predicted arrival and departure times are updated based on vehicle positioning data received from a global positioning system. In each embodiment, the generated and updated route schedules are posted at the host and are accessible from any remote terminal over the network.
Prior systems and methods, including those described above, do not teach or suggest the optimization of vehicle transport loads, such as those in the exemplary embodiments described below.